Nuh Keller wrote in his essay entitled: Who or what is a
Salafi? Is their approach valid?:

The word salafi or "early Muslim" in traditional
Islamic scholarship means someone who died within the first four
hundred years after the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him
peace), including scholars such as Abu Hanifa, Malik, Shafi'i,
and Ahmad ibn Hanbal. Anyone who died after this is one of the khalaf
or "latter-day Muslims".

The term "Salafi" was revived as a slogan and
movement, among latter-day Muslims, by the followers of Muhammad
Abduh (the student of Jamal al-Din al-Afghani) some thirteen
centuries after the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace),
approximately a hundred years ago. Like similar movements that
have historically appeared in Islam, its basic claim was that the
religion had not been properly understood by anyone since the
Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) and the early
Muslims--and themselves.

According to "Salafi" ideology, a "Salafi"
is therefore one who has special knowledge or ability to follow
the beliefs of the Salaf above the massive majority of
common Muslims. They also include certain hand-picked scholars of
later times.

Of course, this illusory definition is questioned by Sunni
Muslims. Even the name of "Salafi," as understood by
the "Salafi" movement, is rejected on the grounds that
it is an innovated appellation which Ahl al-Sunna have not
used and which appeared only a few decades ago. Dr. Sa`id Ramadan
al-Buti of Damascus wrote the definitive book on this issue,
entitled al-Salafiyya marhalatun zamaniyyatun mubarakatun la
madhhab islami (The Salafiyya is a blessed period of history,
not an Islamic school).

Where Ahl al-Sunna further differ with
"Salafis" is in the promotion by the latter of a
handful of controversial scholars as supposedly representing all
of Islamic scholarship after the time of the true Salaf.
They praise and advertise these controversial scholars over and
above the established, non-controversial Ahl al-Sunna scholars of
the intervening centuries. These few controversial scholars are:

The Sunnis disagree with the above because neither do these
belong to the time of the Salaf, nor are they considered
representative of the belief and practice of the Salaf,
nor are they considered foremost authorities by Ahl al-Sunna.
In fact the condemnation of the first three by many scholars is
well-known, as are the innovations and blunders of the latter. It
is interesting to note that al-Dhahabi, who is listed by the
"Salafis" alongside Ibn Taymiyya in the above list, has
himself characterized Ibn Taymiyya as an innovator. His precise
words were:

He [Ibn Taymiyya] was a virtuous and outstanding scholar, very
accurate and meticulous in his intellectual examinations, but
guilty of introducing innovations in the Religion (mubtadi').

These words were reported by the hadith master al-Sakhawi in
his book al-I`lan wa al-tawbikh. Dhahabi's own disclaimer
of the errors of Ibn Taymiyya is stated explicitly in his stern al-Nasiha
al-dhahabiyya, which was published in Damascus in 1347
together with his Bayan zaghal al-`ilm. Ibn Hajar
mentioned Dhahabi's Nasiha in al-Durar al-kamina
(1:166), and so did al-Sakhawi in al-I`lan wa al-tawbikh
(p. 504). Two extant manuscripts of the Nasiha are kept,
one in Cairo at the Dar al-kutub al-misriyya (#B18823) and
one in Damascus at the Zahiriyya library (#1347).

The most definitive proof that the "Salafis" are the
most distant of people to the pious Salaf lies in the
following five fundamental aspects of Salafi ideology:

Anthropomorphism of Allah's attributes: affirming a
place, direction, and corporeal limbs for Allah Almighty
Who is far exalted above all of those;

Disrespect of the Prophet, blessings and peace upon him;

An amateurish, egalitarian approach to Qur'an and hadith
(no need for scholars, or mastery of Arabic, or ijaza
-- traditional accreditation, or the Islamic sciences);

Hatred of the Four Sunni schools of Law (the Four madhahib),
the Two Schools of doctrine (Ash`aris and Maturidis), and
all the schools of self-purification (Tasawwuf);

The practice of takfir: declaring other Muslims
unbelievers.

Mohammad al-Abbasi in his essay entitled Protestant
Islam has explained that the "Salafis" are
essentially Westernized modernists striving to distance
themselves from their own authentic but "messy" Islamic
past in favor of an inauthentic but "hygienic" past
which they identify, in youthful, revisionist fashion, with the
pious Salaf:

With the neatness of mind which they had learnt from the West,
and driven by a giddy enthusiasm which blinded them to the finer
aspects of the classical heritage, many of the fundamentalists
announced that they found the Islam of the people horribly
untidy. Why not sweep away all the medieval cobwebs, and create a
bright new Islam, streamlined and ready to take its place as an
ideology alongside Marxism, capitalism, and secular nationalism?
To achieve this aim, it was thought that the four madhhabs
of fiqh had to go. Ditto for the Ash`ari and Maturidi
theological traditions. The Sufi orders were often spectacularly
exotic and untidy: they of course had to be expunged as well. In
fact, at least ninety percent of the traditional Islamic texts
could happily be consigned to the shredding machine: while what
was left, it was hoped, would be the Islam of the Prophet,
stripped of unsightly barnacles, and presiding over a reunified
Muslim world, striding towards a new and shining destiny.

Unfortunately we see that the principal activity of these
unbarnacled, revisionist "Salafis" has been, since
their Wahhabi forerunners, to declare other Muslims kafir
for not thinking along the same terms as they. The pernicious
little booklet which is the reason behind the present refutation
is only one more of a long, sad series of similar examples. And
from Allah is all success.